James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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or by email:gurneyjourney (at) gmail.comSorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.

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However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.

I feel the experiment reveals a common feature of human awareness (unawareness); an unwillingness to truly look into the eyes and faces of strangers. To an extent, I also believe this is a phenomenon that is strengthened with increased population density and busy lives. The ever-increasing tendency to disengage from the present moment, marking time mentally by listening to our own thoughts about where we're headed, rather than being fully engaged with where we are, leads to the blindness demonstrated in the experiment. Unlike the process you and Jeanette went through, comparing the Soda Jerk painting to the published tearsheet, this experiment in noting changes was rooted in a human interaction. Most people have cultivated numerous defenses to avoid truly making contact with "strangers."

There's an excellent earlier version of this experiment as well: http://viscog.beckman.illinois.edu/flashmovie/15.php . The instructions to the experimental subjects were "When viewing the video, try to count the total number of times that the people wearing white pass the basketball. Do not count the passes made by the people wearing black." Most people don't notice anything unusual in the course of the counting...

I agree with Pete. Not only are artists trained to see more than the average person, but many of us (or at least myself and the artists around me) are constantly observing the world around us in scrutinizing detail. It's become habitual. Even if I'm just sitting in a chair daydreaming, my eyes are still soaking in my surroundings, paying attention to light and shadow, texture, color, and the layout of the world around me.

I also agree with Steve, but I think that also depends on the area you live. That was most certainly the case in California. No one looks each other in the eye. But after moving to Oregon, I've noticed people up here DO look strangers in the eye. Makes me wonder if the results of this experiment might change by region as well?

Interesting. I wonder if the results would be different if the experiment were conducted in a rural environment, as opposed to an urban environment. I'm also curious about the results when gender is factored in: women have better color memory than do men. As gathers, women had to remember the color of berries which were safe to eat. Men on the other hand are better at tracking moving objects: the hunters. This is also a reason why color blindness is prevalent in men.

i also wonder if it had to do with man and man intereaction and woman and man interaction. the females seemed to notice far more then the guys, the guys just almost seemed brain dead...but the girls definatly noticed it was a different guy, haha.

but i bet the same is true if you put a girl there the guys would notice a change, and the girls might fade off into brain dead land?

weird...1st vid mentioned-do people really not notice it?! I mean they kinda get in the way of counting...2nd vid mentioned- I kinda didn't notice anything till the second guy cause i was to busy tilting my head to see the painting. At the end I was laughing so hard I almost fell of my chair but that could be cause I'm sitting like L... Would the out come be different if it was a kid or teenager?and if they just let them leave i wonder how many would see the change later.....

also i thought of even more profound change blindness going on. i read alot of learning to lucid dream and realizing your in a dream just by questioning things around you during your awake time, simpily reminding yourself to check things around you each hour to see if anything is unusual, such as signs clocks. basically looking at a sign, then looking away, then looking back. if your dreaming the sign words might change.

but basically you do this all day, and eventually it becomes habit. and then you start doing it while your dreaming and if your looking at a sign in your dream or clock, look away and look back you can catch yourself dreaming and awaken in your dream.

so i would say that the mind is much much more "asleep" and "blind" then you may think. how can one catch a man who simply changes face, hair and shirt when most people cant even figure out on a nightly basis all the profound huge differences in the real world and the dreaming world.

i remember a dream where i was mowing the lawn and the mower was shooting out 20ft flames, and i just kept on going about my business mowing, if an average person, artist or not cant catch that then its easy to see why 75% of us wont ever catch a person popping up for a split second from behind a counter

I wonder how closely this is tied to familiarity? For example, when traveling in a foreign country, I am mentally exhausted by the end of the day: I have to think carefully about every sign, every spoken word, every landmark.

Perhaps our brains are in cruise control mode in a familiar environment.

Goo Goo, you're right, it seemed to be more often the women who noticed the change in this video and also in that Derren Brown video that James linked to (very clever setup). Don't know why that would be.

Also, that's an interesting link to lucid dreaming. Becoming aware that a dream is a dream (and not reality) means training yourself to look out for absurdities, which is probably a good survival mechanism in this crazy world of ours.

All right, okay -- I watched the video, and the video in Jim Ottaviani's comment. Marvelous! Brought much wondering laughter to my wife and son and I. My wife caught the unusual element in Jim's video -- my son and I did not. Amazing!

On a personal note, thank you for posting something that my son and I could share and laugh at. It helped get us through a particularly rough patch in our lives. Thank you both very much.

People are always trying to get back into their comfort zone (where ever that may be: in front of a computer, easel, tv) and thus seem to ignore the other... interference? I believe it is a coping mechanism many of us spread over the world with a broad brush. I find it hard to believe that autopilot is our natural state but just look at the current news with our actual commercial aircraft pilots... it must be fought!